Tutorials WordPress

A How-To Guide for WordPress Embeds + List of Embed Providers

Updated

Written by

Dave Warfel

Reading Time

3 minutes

If you buy something from one of our links, we may earn a commission.

WordPress oEmbeds were first introduced in version 2.9. Up until now, there were only about 25 oEmbed providers that WordPress allowed you to embed content from.

With the release of WordPress 4.4, you can now embed content from anyone who supports the official oEmbed protocol (and meets certain security requirements). This includes the option to now embed content from other WordPress sites. This also means that once you upgrade to WordPress 4.4, your content can be embedded as well.

There are two main ways to use a WordPress oEmbed on your site. Let’s discuss each method as I point out the slight differences.

WordPress oEmbed How-To Guide

01Paste Link Directly Into Editor

For about 95% of our readers, this will work just fine, and it’s the quickest way to embed content on your WordPress site.

  • Make sure you are in Visual mode in the content editor
  • Move your cursor to a new line
  • Paste a URL from any site that supports oEmbed
    • Twitter: https://twitter.com/{username}/status/123456789
    • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/{username}/posts/123456789
    • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBVSTcHV4go
    • etc…
WordPress oEmbed - Twitter paste directly
Paste URL directly in content editor

02Insert Media Button

For slightly more control, you can use the Add Media button. Clicking this button will open the standard Media modal window.

  1. Place your cursor on a new line
  2. Choose “Insert from URL”
  3. Paste the URL of the content you want to embed
  4. A preview will be displayed below
  5. Click the Insert into post button
WordPress oEmbed with Insert Media button
WordPress oEmbed using the “Insert Media” button

The embed Shortcode

When you embed content using the Add Media button, it utilizes the embed shortcode. The benefit of this shortcode is that it contains two parameters that allow you to set a maximum width & height on your embed. (remove the spaces on the inside of each [ and ] bracket)

[ embed width="1000" height="500" ]http://yoururlhere.com/...[ /embed ]

You will have to switch over to Text mode in the editor to add these parameters.

Alternatively, you could manually type this code into your content editor, instead of using the Add Media button. Either way will allow you to use the width and height parameters.

Learn more about WordPress shortcodes »

WordPress oEmbed Providers

For security reasons, WordPress maintains an internal whitelist of which sites they allow content to be embedded from. As of WordPress 4.9, here is a list of sites that you can embed content from.

WordPress 4.9 added support for Amazon Kindle Instant Previews & Someecards.com.

Service Content Type
Amazon Kindle Instant Previews
Animoto videos
Blip (discontinued in 2015) videos
Cloudup videos, galleries, images
CollegeHumor videos
Dailymotion videos
Facebook post, activity, photo, video, media, question, note
Flickr videos, images
Funny Or Die videos
Hulu videos
Imgur images
Instagram images
Issuu documents
Kickstarter projects
Meetup various types
Mixcloud music
Photobucket images
PollDaddy polls, surveys
Reddit posts, comments
ReverbNation music
Screencast.com videos
Scribd documents
SlideShare presentations
SmugMug various types
Someecards.com ecards
SoundCloud music
Speaker Deck presentations
Spotify music
TED videos
Tumblr various
Twitter tweet, profile, list, collection, like, moment
VideoPress videos
Vimeo videos
Vine (discontinued in 2017) videos
WordPress plugins plugins
WordPress.tv videos
YouTube videos, playlists

Disabling Embeds of Your Content

If your site is running WordPress 4.4 or higher, your own content will be embeddable by other sites. If you’d like to stop other sites from embedding your content, install & activate the Disable Embeds plugin.

Additional Reading for WordPress Embeds

Here are some additional resources & tutorials on how to embed specific types of content in the WordPress editor.

Dave Warfel

LinkedIn  •  X (Twitter)Dave has been working with WordPress since 2011. He's built 100s of client sites and almost a dozen of his own. He's tested almost every plugin you can think of, hosted with at least 10 different companies, and gone down every SEO rabbit hole you can imagine. When's he's not tinkering with new software, you'll find him in the mountains of Colorado, trail running, summiting peaks, and rippin' downhills on his mountain bike. 🏔️🏃🚴🤸

4 responses to “A How-To Guide for WordPress Embeds + List of Embed Providers”

  1. WPServer.com Avatar
    WPServer.com

    oEmbeds is really useful when embedding content in WordPress. Thanks!

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      For sure. Hope you found it useful.

  2. Alexi Avatar
    Alexi

    oEmbeds so slow… esp. if from WordPress site.

    just disable it faster I think ;) https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-embeds-littlebizzy/

    1. Dave Warfel Avatar

      Fair point, Alexi. For more advanced users, I’m sure there’s a more performant way to include third-party content, videos, etc. But for some, oEmbed does make things much easier to understand and implement.

Leave a Comment